ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Richard230 on February 03, 2019, 08:04:56 AM
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Life is tough when all you build is expensive cruisers: https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/focus-on-cruisers-hurts-harley-indian-as-sales-continue-to-slide
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Polaris bought Brammo, and have a network of specialized dealers / service shops. It is a pity they could not do anything with this...
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Polaris does snowmobiles and four wheeled things. Are not they part of the Bombardier group that has those 3 wheeled Can Am Spiders?
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Polaris does snowmobiles and four wheeled things. Are not they part of the Bombardier group that has those 3 wheeled Can Am Spiders?
Polaris has their own 3-wheel "cycle car", the Slingshot, which has had its problems in the past and has done nothing for their "bottom line". They are a separate corporation and are a competitor to the Bombardier conglomerate.
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I think HD is a victim of it's own success. They have been selling hundreds of thousands of big cruisers for what, decades now. Some new bells and whistles but mostly the same bikes. Why buy a new one when your grandpas is about the same and it was grandpas so it's priceless in that regard.
In fashion and vehicles youth want to stand out and be different from whatever the old guys have. Then they get older and maybe richer and go retro and it all comes back again.
Right now there are enough big bikes to satisfy the market and scaling back production, focusing on quality, makes the big boy bike more of a status symbol as it always was but with more rarity to boost profits.
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I don't know about you, but at my H-D- owing age (and then some) a 900-pound motorcycle is just way too much to push around and into the garage - to say nothing of getting it in and out of sloping parking spaces. ::) I think H-D had the right idea with their 500 and 750 Indian-made V-twins, but they blew it on the execution and pricing. Plus, I think they should have gone to Thailand when looking for a factory to build a less expensive and lighter model.
And then there is the Livewire, which is way too expensive to generate very many sales or interest from financially underprivileged "millennials". :(
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HD still has it's market share which is about 50% of all over 750 cc bikes produced on the planet,the market has shrunk but HD still has 50% of that market.
No problems at HD.
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50 % are you sure ? In Europe I would say maybe 10%. And in Asia almost nobody rides 750+
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Speaking of the financial life at H-D, here is what the Motley Fool thinks about the H-D Livewire electric motorcycle:
https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/02/06/harley-davidson-really-misjudged-electric-motorcyl.aspx
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I read once that Henry Ford realized early on that there wasn't much money to be made on economy cars, but that they were a vital part of the company because of sheer volume, which drove everything from the factories to the distribution network through economies of scale. Then, those things could be taken advantage of to make the real money which is available in the luxury car market. Economy cars were the cake, luxury cars were the icing.
HD seems to be uninterested in cake, only icing. I don't think Henry Ford would approve.
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Speaking of the financial life at H-D, here is what the Motley Fool thinks about the H-D Livewire electric motorcycle:
https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/02/06/harley-davidson-really-misjudged-electric-motorcyl.aspx
You are linking to an advertisement for lightning. Two Lightnings both with superior performance for less $ than one HD.
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I read once that Henry Ford realized early on that there wasn't much money to be made on economy cars, but that they were a vital part of the company because of sheer volume, which drove everything from the factories to the distribution network through economies of scale. Then, those things could be taken advantage of to make the real money which is available in the luxury car market. Economy cars were the cake, luxury cars were the icing.
HD seems to be uninterested in cake, only icing. I don't think Henry Ford would approve.
Well said....